Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway
From: jhenry@rand.org (Jim Henry)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: PC Sytems to Handle Phone Inquiries?
Message-ID: <telecom-v09i0440m06@vector.dallas.tx.us>
Date: 9 Oct 89 21:46:58 GMT
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Organization: RAND Corp., Santa Monica, Ca.
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X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 440, message 6 of 12

I would like to design a system which allows a telephone caller to
check the status of an order by telephone without human intervention.
What I envision is a card in a PC that can answer a ringing phone,
deliver a recorded greeting, listen to a series of touch tones and
make the numbers available to a database program.  The database
program would check the order and instruct the card to deliver one of
two recorded resposnses, ready or not ready.

Of course the budget to do any of this is limited.  Is there
reasonably priced hardware that could do this?  Are there better ways
of approaching this problem?  Are there problems with doing this that
I'm overlooking?

Thanks for any ideas you can pass along.